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Character Logo Design

Character Logo Design Explained

A character logo design can personalize your brand, bringing a face or message to who you are as a company and successfully reaching out to your consumer. Character logos come in almost every shape and size and when effectively used, will significantly change how your business is initially perceived.

MS Windows and Apple Logo: Make Good Use of Space

A character logo design isn’t necessarily an anthropomorphic character, or even a person. The Windows logo character is four squares that come together on the screen, and the Apple logo is an apple with a bite taken out of it. One of the things that make both logos so successful, however, is their use of space.

Cartoonists sketch characters out on paper before uploading and finishing on the computer

The exclusion zone of a logo is the perimeter around a logo that can’t contain any other images or words so that the logo does not get lost. Nobody does a better job of this than Apple. The nature of a laptop offers a giant area for the Apple logo to shine, and they make full use of it. They have transferred this open use of space to every other format, too. Even in small spaces, the design ensures that the logo has at least twice its width of space on each side.

Pixar Character: Bringing Life to the Brand

For an example of an active character logo, just remember the Pixar lamp. The Pixar lamp excellently represents its brand for several reasons. First, the connection between a light bulb and ideas is strong, showing that Pixar is an inventive company. Second, they have brought to life an otherwise common part of a home (which is a lot of what Pixar does onscreen).

Most importantly, however, the Pixar lamp has its own mini storyline full of its own personality and playfulness. When you see the lamp, you remember how it accidentally squished the Pixar “I” and how it played with a ball. In thirty seconds or less, Pixar has given you a taste of what they can do with a story, and it is phenomenal.

Android Logo: Creating Versatility

The little green robot that hovers above Android’s name works wonderfully both as a stationary logo and animated character zooming around a commercial or loading page. The character design itself is catchy, creating a robot that mimics the “men” and “women” signs we see on bathroom doors every day. By using only one color, the design will also transfer well to black and white.

The designers took this logo a step further by making it an open-sourced logo, meaning that other designers could take the design and customize it. That is why if you research the Android logo, your search may pick up the little green robot transformed into Frankenstein, the Monopoly man, or R2-D2. The ingrained versatility of the logo in addition to the creator’s willingness to let others tinker with it has made it one of the most memorable designs.

KFC Logo: Describing Who the Brand Is

Sometimes it is not so much what a brand is as who it is. KFC could have used anything as its logo, but it decided to use the image of its founder, Colonel Harland Sanders. He began his restaurant in Kentucky and was the one who originally turned the company into a franchise. He would even dress up as the KFC Colonel on occasion for events.

Are you just as central to your company as your products? For example, if two sisters run a business together, a character logo of two sisters is not a bad idea. Creating a logo based from one of your defining characteristics has been a common way for sole proprietors to market their business for years.

Tony the Tiger: Knowing Your Audience

All you need is a picture of Tony the Tiger to know that we are talking about Frosted Flakes. Tony has been one of the most successful cereal mascots ever created, outlasting other brands and characters like Count Chocula and the Cookie Crisp Bandit even though he originated back in the 1950s. Like most cereal mascots, Tony was created to endear children to himself and the cereal he is the face of.

How is he so good at it? Kellogg knows its audience, so Tony is energetic, incredibly encouraging, and tough in a lets-go-have-fun sort of way. Basically, he is the dream older brother eager to take every child under his wing, and kids love him for it.

Marvel and DC Characters: Using Color Psychology

When you think about comics and other cartoon characters, you might notice that the designers do not just create a character; they also create character logos for cartoon characters. Between DC and Marvel logos, you’ll find that the design communicates the heart of the hero through its images, color, or text.

The spider image of Spiderman, for example, is a spindly looking spider with extra-long legs. A new design of the Spiderman character has brought in the red that has always been included in the costume. When viewed through color psychology, the positive connotations of red include things like courage and strength. Red is actually physically stimulating, raising our pulse rate in a similar way that the spider’s venom has strengthened Peter Parker’s blood. DC logos are equally enlightening in view of color psychology as well; the yellow background of Batman’s logo has to do with fear and depression, the reigning emotions of Gotham City, while the black bat lends itself to protection and menace.

Think a character or mascot could be the right fit for your brand? The Logo Company is a leading logo design company rated highly by The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, INC., and more, and we would be happy to help you find a logo you love. Our design packages come with unlimited revisions and redraws so that you get exactly what you need. Worried you won’t be satisfied? We also offer a no-questions-asked full refund.